If raising the minimum wage would hurt business, as the Republican Party insists, then it stands to reason that lowering it from $7.25 an hour would help business. And since the business of America, as President Calvin Coolidge said, is business. What are we waiting for?

How about $5, perchance $3? That would be like a steroid injection for our sluggish economy. As a college student in 1970 I spent one summer working for a vegetable farmer and earned the base pay of $1.45 an hour. The minimum wage for farm workers then was lower than that for the rest of the workforce ($1.60), presumably because we could nibble fresh produce while we worked in the blazing sun or driving rain.

Business has taken so many big hits over the years it’s a wonder there are any entrepreneurs left. The compulsory six-day, 12-hour a day workweek is long gone. One of the first strikes in American history advocated for the 10-hour workday. Good times!

Child labor is now taboo, too, at least in this country. My fraternal grandfather began earning his keep at the age of ten in a Pennsylvania coal mine. Little people worked cheap and their tiny bodies and nimble hands allowed them to get into tight places where grownups couldn’t go.

Once the minimum wage was zero, zilch, nada, nil. For centuries slavery greased the wheels of commerce here and abroad. It wasn’t simply that free labor was good for plantation owners. Enslaved people represented collateral for commercial investment, profits for insurance companies, a lucrative market for New England beef and dried cod, and a potent stimulus to expanding global trade.

As hard as it will be for some readers to believe, it was the Republican Party that brought this business-friendly era to a screeching halt. To be fair, the “Grand Old Party” was in its infancy back then and wasn’t nearly so Grand. It has come a long way, blindly siding with business over labor in almost every instance since, fighting tooth and nail against most of the provisions that have shaped modern labor practices.

And the GOP is still fighting – and not just against increasing the federal minimum wage for the first time since 2009. In Maine, Republicans recently tried to loosen restrictions on longstanding child-labor laws so teenagers could work longer and later on school nights (11 p.m.) and for considerably less than the minimum wage. Talk about progress!

But mainly, Republicans are pushing back against Obama et al., who are arguing that it is time to raise the minimum wage. The Democrats anti-business rant goes something like this:

Inflation has effectively decreased the current minimum wage (which is not indexed to the cost of living as Social Security payments are) by more than 11 percent since 2009.

To equal the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage circa 1968 would mean a current figure of $10.69, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Lowest-wage Americans need the extra money just to survive and will spend every penny of it on goods and services, thereby stimulating the economy more than tax breaks for the rich, who already have everything money can buy.

Republicans reply pithily that businesses are people, too. If you don’t believe them just ask the U.S. Supreme Court.

My grandfather and I survived the coal mines and the farm. I went back to college. Michael Holahan was rescued from a life underground by an uncle who was a priest and put him to work for the parish.

In my grandfather’s day things were simpler and regulations were few and far between. There were states that didn’t require children to attend school but let them be put to work in mines and factories. Was that so bad?

"Shippwrekked (BR15-108'') (acrylic on fabric), by Brent Ridge, in show "Liz Gargas and Brent Ridge,'' at the New Art Center, Newton, Mass., March 4-April 10. The gallery says that Mr. Ridge "operates in a land of abstraction rooted in appropriation, landscape, and post-industrial aesthetics''

"Smoke" by Lisa Oppenheim

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"The parody trailer by comedy network Above Average explores a world in which the dedicated Spotlight team finishes their work on sexual abuse in the Catholic church and investigates what else is wrong with Boston: everything."

Newport

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson Siebel, at the Wood Museum, Springfield, Mass through July 10, 2016

Her work features 343 portraits, one for every New York City firefighter lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The images are along a 21-foot-long wall, allowing visitors to come face to face with men who made a living out of risking their own in order to save others.

"Saturday, March 21 (1965). Afternoon. Taken on my arrival in Selma {Ala, at the Brown Chapel area," by JAMES H. BARKER

"Saturday, March 21 {1965}. Afternoon. Taken on my arrival in Selma {Ala.}, at the Brown Chapel area," by JAMES H. BARKER, in the show "Through the Lens of History: Selma & Civil Rights,'' Grand Circle Gallery, Boston, through January.

"Consumable Sugarhouse,''

"Consumable Sugarhouse,'' in Norwich, Vt.

“A sap run is the sweet good-bye of winter”

"Window 60 Autumn,'' by Maira Reinbergs

"Window 60 Autumn,'' by Maira Reinbergs in the "Color Passages'' show at ArtProv gallery, Providence, through Feb. 17.

"Hydrogen 1,'' by Sarah Hulsey, in her show "Schemata"

"Hydrogen 1,'' by Sarah Hulsey, in her show "Schemata,'' at Chandler Gallery, Cambridge, Mass., through March 11.

An arrogant plutocrat for the masses; bees imperiled

How curious that middle- and lower-income Americans who feel with some justification that they have been treated with disdain by an increasingly arrogant and selfish plutocracy turn for leadership to a sleazy, arrogant and narcissistic member of the plutocracy.

"Frog Prince,'' by MAXFIELD PARRISH, at the show "The Power of Print,'' at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., through Jan. 10. Mr Parrish did much of his work in New England at the artists' colony in Cornish, N.H.

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,''

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,'' from the archives of the Cape Ann Museum, in Gloucester.

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Colored Stone History

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

"Unihemispheric Existence''

"Unihemispheric Existence'' (detail) (steel, wood, gallery wall), by WILSON HARDING LAWRENCE, in the show "Nuanced: open-endedness, capaciousness and other provocative conditions of making,'' at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, Mass., through

"The Market Is a Snake,'' by MICHAEL YEFKO, in the show "Further on Down the Yellow Brick Road,'' at Hera Gallery, in Wakefield, R.I., through June 20. In it he explores "temporal aspects of geometry.''

"Physicality'' (photography, oil, narrative text and resin on panel), by SHERRY KARVER, in her show "Objects of Affection,'' at Lanoue Gallery, Boston, through Oct. 31.

"Dream Work of Thomas Street''

(acrylic on panel), by SHAWN KENNEY

"Karl with Honeybears"

"Karl with Honeybears'' (oil on canvas), by DAVID PETTIBONE, at the Corey Daniels Gallery,

"smoke"

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"Elevation'' (acryllic on canvas), by Diane Novetsky, in her show 'EARTHSHIFTER

"Nero''

"Nero'' (Marquina marble), by PAUL BLOCH

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward,'' by JEFFREY MARSHALL, in the show "Katrina Then and Now: Artists as Witness,'' through Oct. 10, at Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester.

"Siberia Imagined and Reimagined"

Photo in Krasnoskamensk, Russia, March 2006, by SERGEY MAXIMISHIN, in the show "Siberia Imagined and Reimagined,'' at the Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Mass., through Jan. 10.

"Arcology'' (detail; gouache and Lascaux acrylics on archival papers), by Ilona Anderson, in her show "Arcology,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston.

"Resonance: book in time II''

"Resonance: book in time II'' show at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass., Dec. 6-Jan. 16. It's a collection of individual and collaborative artists' books by Ann Forbush, Ania Gilmore and Annie Zeybekoglu.

"Civil Rights Marchers Walking from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on Monday, March 23, 1965,'' photo by JAMES BARKER, in the show "Through the Lens of History: Selma & Civil Rights at the Grand Circle Gallery,'' Boston, through January.